The use of computer networks has become an integral part of the way businesses provide goods and services to their customers. One advantage the use of the network provides is to enable the distribution of applications and the business logic that they are comprised of closer to the actual user, or customer. This enables these businesses to offer higher levels of service to disparate groups of customers in a wider geographic area than ever before. This opportunity has also enabled to businesses to allow customers access to the network, albeit limited, for example, to directly track their purchases. In this case, each customer may have access to standardized or “tailored” application software packages or to custom developed software packages, to perform desired operations.
As the networks continue to expand in size and utilization, it becomes important that the network be operating properly. In one aspect, it is critical that information or content among all the components of a network be timely and consistent. For example, in a retail network, it is important that an addition of merchandise or changes to price, color, and quantity of merchandise is reflected on all components of the performed by a mass transmission of all, or updated portions, of the content, to each of the network elements.
However, it is often difficult to determine whether all the network components are properly updated and contain the same information. For example, if during the mass transmission of the updated content, a link or component failure occurs, then the updated content may not be properly received by one or more network components or elements.
Currently, one method to determine whether all the network elements contain the same content, is to compare the content on each network element with a master copy or version of content. This requires that the device, e.g., server, hosting the master version be continuously occupied as the master version is compared individually to the copy on each network element intended to have such information or content.
However, this convention method of comparison is expensive in network bandwidth and time as a master version must be maintained and an “item-by-item” comparison must be made on each network element. Hence, there is a need in the industry for a method and apparatus for determining whether content has been satisfactorily deployed to network elements.